Jaguar Land Rover, Vodafone, Huawei Demonstrate C-V2X
Jaguar Land Rover, Vodafone, and Huawei have demonstrated a cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) system and are claiming it can “significantly improve road safety standards”.
They say the system they demonstrated was developed in compliance with 3GPP’s Release 14 safety standard and that it can give motorists “greater awareness of vehicles, infrastructure, and pedestrians in their vicinity”. The companies are claiming the demonstration was the first one ever in Europe to showcase C-V2X’s ability to make long-range communications (LRC) and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) via “a live mobile network”.
The demonstration was carried out on a Jaguar F-PACE and a Land Rover Discovery, and involved C-V2X hardware units fitted with a single Huawei chipset that could support both LRC and DSRC being attached to each vehicle. A Huawei roadside unit gave the cars speed limit alerts and Vodafone’s mobile network provided the LRC inter-vehicle connectivity. However, both Toyota and Volkswagen favor DSRC as a reliable CV communication provider, rather than the 4G or even 5G infrastructure provided by the major telcos, as it is not subject to the same blind spots and gaps in coverage as mobile networks.
Vodafone head of research and development Luke Ibbetson claimed the move showed C-V2X had “reached a mature stage and is ready for deployment”. Jaguar Land Rover V2X group manager Colin Lee also claimed: “Increasing the line of sight of a vehicle by enabling it to talk to other vehicles, pedestrians, and the surrounding environment means we can drastically help to improve road safety for all road users”.
